Animal Tale #0 

The best thing in Castello di Fiemme

I remember waking up one Sunday morning; I was probably six or seven years old.

When I try to relive that morning now, it feels like an early spring day. The air is fresh, and the sun is shining, shyly, after the long winter. The streets of the village are strangely busy, and not only because the mass is about to start. Something is different. Something happened during the night. Outside, adults are chatting; some seem worried, others incredulous. All of them are looking towards the house at the end of the street, where my friends and I used to play hide and seek on long summer nights, where I, so badly, wanted to give my first kiss.

I start making my way towards that house, and then I see it. On the side of a small, self-build, wonky wooden hut, which was used to store wood for the stube, there it was: a bear footprint.

A bear crossed our village that night, and we all were sleeping.

We, the inhabitants of a small catholic village in the north of Italy, felt blessed. Some because the bear didn't hurt anyone, others, like me, because he chose us. He not only blessed us with a visit, but he also left a sign of his passage behind. (Quite frankly, when I think about it now, the fact he did not fall inside that small, unstable storage is magical in itself).

Later on, the family that owned that house, built a small frame, with a glass cover and all, to try to protect and preserve the footprint. It became the pride of our village.I, first, remember taking my friends from other villages there, to show them. We were the chosen by the bear.

It was the best thing in Castello di Fiemme.

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